


And the Veins to Match: Part 3 of "The Sky's Altar Aflame"

by Cyra (lc_144725)



Series: The Sky's Altar Aflame [3]
Category: Being Human (US/Canada)
Genre: Nursing, Plague, Siphon, Virus, hunger, sick, vampire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 21:02:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16145447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lc_144725/pseuds/Cyra
Summary: When a siphon's loyalty is cemented to be on your side, who needs the blood of werewolves to fight the plague?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, this one fought me fucking tooth and nail it did not want to be written and I am most certainly not proud of how it turned out don't judge me please lol.  
> Also, in this, Aidan didn't stay with Sally, Josh, and Nora when he got infected. He left not too long before he was supposed to die because he didn't want them to watch it happen. So, of course, Aracelis found him and here we are.
> 
> Reminder: I have made (and will make) no promises that this series will be linear, keep up with continuity, seem like they’re meant to be in the same storyline, or generally make sense (individually or together). I write these as they come to me regardless of any bits of the series contradicting or supporting them. I MIGHT go back in later, once the series is completed, and fix all of that. For now, however, it’s vital for anyone reading to understand that I’m writing this for me and no one else; I’m sharing it simply because I can. Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading!

     This was a downside to the arrangement I found so necessary: timing. The spell I cast to limit our bond only alerted me to his suffering when he was moments away from death. Before his burial, that was acceptable, easier even. But by this time, I had allowed him to be locked away underground in agony and mental anguish without even being aware of it. And, sure, I’d helped him after, saved him when he’d been further drained and couldn’t find the drive to get to clean blood, but that negated neither my past neglect nor the mistake I made thereafter: abandoning him to a plague I thought- no, I’d _hoped,_ so foolishly, he’d avoid. Now, I didn’t know for sure that I could save him. As this thought repeated in my mind, my breaths stuttered and my hands shook around one of the many grimoires I’d sought help in. I shook my head to clear my mind of such absurdity.

     _I am twice his age_ , I thought to myself, trying to force my annoyance to distract from my anxiety. _I have lost people before and I surely will again. I barely know Aidan freaking Waite -_ a lie, of course- _there is no reason for me to be so attached_ and yet… I’d spent two-and-a-half centuries with him always in the back of my mind, ready to save him at a moments notice. I’d spent two hundred and fifty years connected to him in a way never explained to me by the multitude of resources at my disposal. I’d spent _half_ my _life_ struggling not to succumb to that bond and forcing myself to remain at a distance. I hated it. I didn’t understand it so I hated it. But for some reason, I couldn’t hate him. _This is ridiculous._

Despite this, when I heard a noise from downstairs, possibly him waking from sleep, nothing else mattered and in a flash I was at his side. The vampire’s face was contorted in pain and he was tense almost everywhere, shaking sporadically, and releasing pained groans every few seconds. I knelt next to him with a hand on his chest in a vain attempt at comfort but also as a way to re-establish our connection. I pulled from the power within me, allowing a vein of energy to flow into him, laced with the intent to calm a mind terrified and agonized. As I felt him relax and dreams anodyne take him over, I withdrew my consciousness from his, a task tedious and difficult at best, and breathed a sigh of relief.

     Taking the time after to refresh his surroundings and aid my future self, I retrieved a rag and small bowl, filling the latter with water and setting it by the couch. Next I replaced the blanket strewn over him, seeing as how the original was dampened by sweat. I was on my way back when I heard him and saw messy dark hair over the back of the couch.

     “Henry…” he whispered as he tried to sit up. I could hear the fear and pain that single name was laced with past the fatigue. The sound broke my heart even as I rushed over insistent he didn’t expel a modicum more of strength.

     “Aidan, _Aidan_ , hey… it’s alright, you’re safe… everything’s going to be okay. Just breathe, love, just breathe,” I murmured repeatedly, trying for a gentle tone, as calm as I was trying to get him to become. Something must have worked because he was listening as best he could. In an attempt to tether himself to reality past the virus-induced haze one of his hands met mine above his still heart and clung to it, sometimes tightly and sometimes with a grip barely there at all. With my other hand, I reached for the towel, forcing a reasonable bit of water out and cooling it via magic before bringing it to his forehead, dabbing beads of sweat from his hairline and cheeks. By now, I was humming softly, a song of the ocean and peace meant to, I think, calm me as much as him. As the vampire’s hand tightened around mine again his eyes lazily shifted to mine, going in and out of focus as he watched me.

     He tried to speak occasionally, but only got a few gibberish words out before losing himself to the incoherency of what I knew to be waking dreams. At one point, however, dark eyes gleamed with a clarity I was shocked by as Aidan lifted his hand from mine to my face, tracing the side of it with the back of his fingers and mumbling, almost too quiet and fractured to hear: “… it’s you… always there…you save me… but… who are you…”

     “I-” I tried to speak, to tell him whatever savior he was thinking of in his virus-addled brain wasn’t me, that his mind was playing tricks on him and my motivations were selfish at best. But I was utterly baffled by his words and he was lost in death’s beckoning, so he was asleep again by the time I could find the words to speak aloud. I sighed and shook my head. There was no point in reasoning with a sick vampire anyway.

     I stayed with him for several moments more, running my fingers through his hair and pondering over what to do, trying to think up ways to cure him faster, but I couldn’t keep my focus on that for long: my mind drifted to dark places like his demise when I did.

     Without breath or life of his own, sleep looked like death when he tried it on. I scoffed, amused at my own thought. He _was_ dead; of course he should look the part. But it was losing him forever that scared me, that made fear claw at my throat with talons of ice, and threatened to rip my heart to pieces.


	2. Chapter 2

     I barely hesitated when I heard the softest of movements from behind me and simply continued dicing the meat on my cutting board. _He’s up,_ came the singsong of my mind’s voice over the song I hummed to myself aloud _._ Aidan was lucky I wasn’t anyone but myself. No other Siphon would tolerate a mere vampire thinking he could actually best her.

     He’d been making considerable progress, which was a massive relief. For a while it had been slow, the results unpredictable, but in time I came to gladly learn he’d make a full recovery. He wasn’t quite there at this very moment, but he probably thought he was well enough to take me on should I prove to be an enemy. My arrogance smirked and my fondness for him found it almost cute. Unaware my senses surpassed his, he’d vanished from the sofa with vampiric speed. So it came as no shock to me when the crystal of one of my knives ever so faintly slid against the wood of its holder behind me and the blade was at my throat. Nor did surprise me when he pinned an arm behind my back as soon as I dropped the knife I’d been making use of.

     “Who are you? Where am I?” Aidan’s voice was rough with sleep and disorientation. His grip almost shook and I heard him swallow. I didn’t bother keeping our emotions from bleeding into one another, so the physical contact between us was surely startling to him. _He doesn’t trust you,_ I reminded myself. _He probably wants to but he doesn’t. Don’t get him too worked up. He needs the energy,_ my worry whispered from the back of my mind, reminding me of the life he led and all that he was so blissfully ignorant about.

     “You should put that down before you get yourself hurt,” I said, sounding apathetic but feeling mildly irked. I was relieved at his state, sure, but I didn’t care for being threatened. Not even with knives that couldn’t truly harm me.

     “Maybe I will as soon as you explain to me what the hell is going on.” The vampire was shifty and uncomfortable, not used to feeling things that weren’t his to feel and certainly still being drained from the virus.

     “Oh I’d love to explain if I weren’t being futilely threatened. Come on, Aidan, we both know neither of us are human, so do you really think I’d just leave the key to my death lying around in a knife holder? Do you really think you could kill me?” I met his eyes in a mirror hung above the stove next to us. “You’ve just barely regained use of your limbs and the coherency to function; your entire body feels like jelly, fragile from the disuse and disease. You’re still not sure this is reality, but… the world feels a bit more solid now, like you can truly feel it. The dreams didn’t feel like that. Everything you touched felt like thick fog, slipping away from you. It was worse when you were almost conscious, wasn’t it? The dreams became what were essentially hallucinations. Even now, you’re teetering on the edge of true wakefulness and passing out all over again, but you can tell you’re not going to die anymore. Who do you think made sure of that? Show some gratitude. You’re old enough to know your manners and not to slit the throats of people who try and help you.” He didn’t relent, but I could tell he was almost there. “If I wanted you hurt or dead I would’ve left you in that alley and let the plague consume you. Or I would’ve killed you myself while you were weaker.” I took a deep breath as the knife withdrew from my carotid, and turned to face the vampire.

     “How do you know my name? Or what this feels like? Who are you?” He asked again.

     I looked at him for a few moments, assessing and hesitant to tell him anything. I’d spent a long time successfully managing to stay out of his reach. Did I really want to throw that all away? Then again, what choice did I have? I moved past him and walked over to the couch, gesturing for him to sit as well. He didn’t. _Fair enough, I suppose._

     “I’m just someone who’s dealt with the plague before, albeit in a different form, but I know how to help treat it. So when I saw you ready to turn to ash, I helped. Sue me… or, in your case, put a blade to my throat, I suppose. I know exactly what you’re going through because a long time ago I was in your shoes. This virus isn’t as new as you all think. As for where you are, well, I’d be concerned for the toll the virus took on your brain if you can’t pick up on the fact that I, you know, live here.” I didn’t like being so clipped with him, but I knew I had to be. I had to discourage him from ever seeking me out without being blunt about it. God knew Aidan Stubbornness Waite would never give something up once you told him he had to.

     “You expect me to believe you just helped me out of the goodness of your heart? Cured a virus that has no cure? Besides, you couldn’t have _been in my_ shoes; this virus only affects vampires and I can hear your heartbeat.” He crossed his arms, still on guard and skeptical.

     “Follow your gut, Aidan. I haven’t asked a thing of you and you’re feeling a lot less like you’re going to keel over any second. Not to mention, if I worked for anyone I’d have shared this cure you don’t believe in and a whole lot of your people would be just fine. Sounds to me like the only one of us who has had anything less than good intentions is you, doesn’t it?” His expression faltered and it almost hurt to have scolded him. I ran a hand through my hair and sighed, looking over and noticing everything I’d had out for him, standing to fix our surroundings. I was almost finished putting it all away when I heard him speak softly.

     “Thank you… for helping me. You didn’t have to do that.” By now, I was wringing out the wet cloth into the sink. Knowing there was more conversation to come, I figured I might as well face him head-on, so I turned and met his eyes.

     “You’re right; I didn’t, especially because you didn’t ask me to. I _volunteered_. There’s no need to thank me for that. You don’t owe me a thing, not even gratitude, but I appreciate your manners finally kicking in,” I said just as gently and with a smile. He laughed, mildly embarrassed.

     “Yeah, I’m uh sorry about that. I just-”

     “Oh, don’t bother love. Had I woken up in nine kinds of pain and exhaustion I’d be on edge too. Paired with the whole unfamiliar setting and person just dicing pig flesh in her kitchen, yeah, I’d probably react worse. No hard feelings; just don’t do it again. Fair?”

     “Fair. But… pig flesh?”

     “Potion.”

     “So you’re a witch? Is that how you made the cure?”

     “Not quite. There’s more than one way to save someone from this version of the plague, so I used the method most readily available to me,” I said cryptically. I could see the questions swimming in his eyes, but he looked like he’d been startled from a daydream when I told him to ask away, that it was the only way he’d get answers to at least some of his unsaid inquiries.

     “You said you’d been in my shoes. You also said there are different strains of the virus. What are you? How’s the one you had different from the one for vampires?”

     “Well first of all I’m alive so it had to work differently to infect and destroy someone whose life actually belonged to them. It forced power to feed on itself so its strongest hosts died quicker, more violently. Whatever was leftover was devoured by the sickness,” I said, refusing to meet his eyes. With a sigh, I continued, “For vampires, you _are_ remains. It has to do less work so it spreads faster and it’s harder to treat. It depletes the energy within you and, ironically enough, you probably ended up feeling more human on the precipice of your own extinction than you ever have since your first death.” He sat in the chair adjacent to me.

     “Secondly, what I am is different than anything you’ve come across and, quite frankly, none of your concern. Third… the cure… for you, it was my blood. In a series of doses over time, it kept you alive –or rather, the closest you get to alive- while targeting the plague and snuffing it out, starving it. I wasn’t sure you’d survive long enough for it to work; I admit for a while it was sort of touch and go.”

     “Then that would work for other vampires as well?” Though his face remained impassive his eyes sparked with the idea he all-but-said.

     “I can see the gears in your head turning but you really shouldn’t bother. You wouldn’t be able to administer it or use it at all to help your people and I won’t. I didn’t sign on to take care of every vampire in Boston that wants to come break down my door amass with famine. I decided to take _you_ in and you alone: an impulsive decision that you’d do well not to make me regret. This virus is just an aspect of nature coming back to bite you all in the ass. I get that not all vampires are awful and that there are many who deserved to be saved so you can save us both that speech. But every species has their reckoning, their meteor, their Black Plague, their Great War. This is yours. Let it do its job; let it cut down the population and let a new vampiric race start anew. That’s how history works: repetition in disguise. We don’t have to like it, but you’ve been alive long enough to know you must follow it.” He looked mildly angry then sort of dejected.

     “If you’re so adamant about submitting to nature’s way, why save me at all?”

     “What’s one vampire, in the face of all that?” I glanced at the clock on the wall, then at my watch as if they’d be different. “Damn… I didn’t think you’d wake so late.”

     “What time is it? How long have I been here?” He stood, but dizziness set in before he could begin walking. I was at his side immediately, helping to gently guide him back to a sitting position.

     “You’ve been here for about three days, in and out of consciousness, but never fully awake like this. It’s a bit past a time for your dose that’s why you’re feeling this way. Just wait here, alright? Aidan?” I held his face, making him look at me. His face, previously twisted with pain, relaxed a bit and he nodded. Now he just looked tired, the toll taken on his body visible. When I returned, needle and kit in hand, he looked confused and his distrust was back.

     “I’m just drawing my blood. Don’t worry,” I said calmly as I wiped off a spot on my wrist with an alcohol pad. My skin fought the needle and it took a while to get the cylinder full, but finally did and had the tip of it at the crook of Aidan’s elbow and everything was going to be okay. I looked to him for permission, for some reason feeling like I needed it now that he could say yes or no. He motioned for the needle himself and, hesitantly, I gave it to him, keeping a hand on his arm to maintain out connection. He shivered and then his eyes widened as he pushed the plunger down, gooseflesh breaking out, and he felt the energy physically flow into him, making his body flare with newfound life. After he handed the needle to me and I stepped away from him, he seemed to deflate just a little, which only served to worry me more. _Had I not given him enough_? Damn Aidan freakin’ Waite and his ability to make me nervous over the littlest things. I was so over it.

 

     “For someone who seems so accustomed to vampires, you have… unconventional methods of feeding them,” Aidan commented a little later. We were in the library reading, a book for him and a grimoire for myself.

     “There’s a handful of people I’d ever let feed directly from me. Both the relationship and situation have to coincide with it. It’s messy and complicated, so needles are a better alternative.”

     “I see where you get the messiness from but most vampires never see it as complicated.” There was a soft smile playing on his lips, amused. My expression mirrored his as I replied.

     “Well I’m not a vampire, now am I? Watch.” Carefully avoiding further damage of the ancient book in my hands, I closed it and set it on the floor and stood walking to the furthest corner of the library. Taking a dagger off my wall, part of a collection, I made a deep but short incision across my wrist. Aidan’s eyes filled with black, his fangs elongated, and he was racing toward me all in an instant. Though it healed just before he reached me, I was still pinned to the wall behind me by his presence and domineering hunger. This wasn’t Aidan Waite, a vampire trying to get clean. This was Aidan Waite, the cruelest of vampires. The best. Standing over me was the ripper that struck monsters with nightmares.

     But suddenly he wasn’t anymore. As soon as my wound healed and my blood dissipated, courtesy of Siphon magic, he was just a dead man walking, infected with a disease he didn’t understand, and freshly taken from his grave to be thrust back into a pale imitation of the life he wished he could live. He wasn’t standing over me anymore, towering with predatory intent death’s-essence dark, he was simply standing in front of me with hands against a wall he cracked from hitting so hard and strained muscles fighting between the _starvation_ that just suddenly slipped away and the desire not to harm. He shook with the conflicting urges and looked at me with eyes of chocolate, dazed and confused, but also understanding. He flinched as I reached my hand up to his face but relaxed into my touch as soon as he felt it.

     “Well look at you,” I whispered softly, “black eyes and everything. Not yesterday you even had the veins to match.” I laughed gently and a relieved sigh of a laugh escaped him. We both knew he wanted to apologize but that I would have none of it.

     While my blood incited a need to ravish, my touch sated the same hunger: a lesson this vampire in my care would need time to understand.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope everyone enjoys their day. Have fun; don’t die; make new friends; don’t talk to strangers!


End file.
